I am convinced that each of us is destined to achieve great things, to eat the world in our own way. I firmly believe it. But I also think that to achieve great things we have to know how to live with our emotions.
That fails us. And it's the only thing that keeps us from our dreams.
Not knowing how to interpret loneliness, boredom or jealousy can lead you to feel anxious about food:
If you see yourself identified / or let me tell you that this is for you. Because the time has come to feed your body with what it requires and your life with what it needs.
NOTE: all the information in this article and more can be found in my free e-mail course. It will guide you step by step to eliminate that anxiety about food, lose weight healthily and improve self-esteem.
Although anxiety is caused by something outside you, it is not solved by changing the outside world. Put yourself in a situation: your boss at work gets on your nerves and when you get home you gorge yourself on chocolate.
Is the solution to change jobs? Or boss? No way!
Because now the boss is the "culprit" but perhaps in a few years the anxiety will be caused by your children or any other external situation.
The solution is to change your insides so that you can handle anxiety.
And how do we do this?
To eliminate anxiety about food, we must talk about the two causes that affect the most:
Has this ever happened to you?
You start to eat something that you have prepared and, suddenly, you realize that you are about to reach the last bite of your food and you have not even noticed.
Many times we eat without being aware of what we are doing. And this is a very serious mistake because our body needs time to feel satiated and to enjoy food..
It is scientifically proven that the body is not able to feel the sensation of satisfaction in the stomach immediately. So, the old “eat slower” advice has never been better..
Give your meals more time and watch the anxiety diminish. Also, when you eat more slowly you savor the flavors more, so you will enjoy the food more..
It sounds very simple and it is. But don't take it as an excuse for not putting it into practice. Take that simplicity as a perfect excuse to practice it whenever you can..
A trick to eat more slowly
Being consistent about something as simple as eating a little slower than usual can be very difficult. So I always like to use The Clock Technique to make things easier and fun. In summary, it consists of the following:
Every time you go to eat you should have a reminder that you are going to use this peculiar Technique. I usually use a post-it in the fridge and on which I have drawn a very large clock. So when I start cooking I have no choice but to watch it. You can also use a mobile alarm, for example.
The Clock Technique consists of timing a meal and increasing the time taken for the next meal by 5 more minutes, making use of the anti-rewards.
For example, if you usually make your meal in 10 minutes, the new goal is to make it in 15 minutes. So, you get ready to eat, set your timer and start.
If at the end you have not reached 15 minutes, for example you have stayed in 12 minutes, then you must write down the time that you have missed until the goal. In this example: 3 minutes we have missed to reach 15.
We repeat the same thing for all the main meals of the day and in the end we will have a few minutes that we have missed: 3 minutes for lunch, 2 for breakfast and 5 for dinner. In total, 10 minutes a day.
As we have not met the objective we will use an anti-reward, that is, a punishment. Something that annoys us a lot. Personally, getting up earlier the next day works especially well for me..
So if I owed 10 minutes to my meals, I will subtract those from my alarm clock. Instead of 8 a.m. I'll wake up at 7:50.
You can use any anti-reward that annoys you enough. I encourage you to try it.
Sugar, alcoholic beverages, and refined foods are your food craving's best friend and your worst enemy. Its effects on the body make you feel immediate pleasure but for a few minutes you want more and more, creating anxiety for them.
What are we talking about? Sugar, pastries, fried in excess, "breakfast cereals", etc..
How do we remove them? Not eliminating them. The best way is to replace them with other healthier options such as nuts, fruits, whole grains, etc. Do it gradually. Little by little but always for the better.
Even if you follow the two previous steps, it is most likely that the anxiety about food will continue to appear. This occurs because much of the anxiety (if not almost all) is created in your brain.
Let me explain: it is not your boss and his bad manners that are causing you anxiety. They are not your children. Not your financial situation. None of that creates the anxiety to eat.
You are the responsible person:
Good news! Because if you believe it, you can delete it.
You may not be able to change your boss, or your children, or the difficulties of life, but you can change your thoughts towards them..
And for this, it is necessary that we first talk about feelings.
Imagine a dark room where you cannot see inside.
In that darkness are all your "negative" feelings: hatred, jealousy, rejection, boredom, etc.
When any external situation pushes us to enter this room, we usually resist because we do not know what we are going to find. But the truth is that in that room there are only feelings. Nothing more.
In order to eliminate food anxiety you have to allow yourself to enter that room of anxiety and feel it. You have to feel that anxiety, boredom, hate ...
This does not mean feeling overwhelmed by feeling. Rather the opposite: without resistance to enter the room, we take serene and calm steps in the dark.
Something that helps a lot to achieve this serenity to experience feelings and emotions is this meditation exercise:
When you go into the feeling room, focus on your breathing. Notice how the air moves in and out slowly. Try to breathe as gently as possible.
Now get a pen and paper and describe what you feel in your body as accurately as possible. Where does it feel, with what intensity, duration ... as much as you can. Again, describe your feeling as you breathe: calmly and serenely.
Finally, refocus your attention on how the air enters and leaves your nose..
You just walked through the room of feelings.
If you have stayed long enough in that darkness you will see that it no longer scares you. Even that anxiety you had has diminished.
The third step will allow you to win the battle against anxiety in the short term.
The fourth step, meanwhile, it will allow you to win the war against anxiety forever.
As you have already seen, anxiety (and all feelings) are created in your mind. When a thought or belief settles in your brain it provokes a feeling. For example, the belief that my children should behave as I know is best for them causes anxiety when the little ones do not act as you expect.
The question in this step is to find out what are those thoughts or beliefs that cause us to crave eating.
For this it is essential to put on the Sherlock Holmes costume: ask with curiosity but never judging the answers. No matter how silly or illogical they may seem, there is no use judging.
So when you are no longer afraid of the darkness of the Room of Feelings, that is, when the feeling lives in you but does not overwhelm you, then ask yourself:
"Why do I feel this way?" To that answer, ask again "why?" as many times as necessary to reach the key thought.
An example of this would be something like this:
AHA! That is the belief that governs you and believe me, it is not good. Now it's time to change it.
Please, I insist: nothing to judge yourself by the beliefs that we have installed. If they do not serve us, we will change them, but the change will be much more difficult if we punish ourselves for them..
Now comes the funniest part: changing the thoughts that do not serve us.
We must replace the old belief with a new one. However, be prepared because at first it will not be easy. Simply because your brain does not have it installed yet.
If, for example, throughout your life you have thought that you were overweight and there was nothing you could do to change it. If you decide to change this thought now, it will be uncomfortable.
But that doesn't mean you don't.
If instead of the old thought you now want your belief to be: “I can change physical. I can lose weight and I don't have to be like that ”obviously at first it will be uncomfortable. And it will be because you don't believe it yet.
But with the right tools you can do it. This way the change you make is forever.
It is at this point especially that I highly recommend the help of a professional on the subject, someone who has been there to help you and give you the strategies that work on how you can lose weight or control that anxiety. But you can also start yourself with this tool:
"Act as if ..."
Personally, I always recommend this way of building this new belief that has worked very well for my students and myself..
As it could not be otherwise, it consists of mimicking the behavior that we want to have spontaneously. If we continue with the example of: “I can lose weight and I don't have to be that way”, what would that person do??
Each time you do one of these actions it will reinforce your new thinking that "you can lose weight and it doesn't have to be this way".
In short, to eliminate food cravings, follow these steps:
If you found it interesting and want to learn this step-by-step procedure and more strategies, you can sign up for my free email course. It is dedicated to eliminating food cravings, losing weight in a healthy way, and improving self-esteem..
I hope you have enjoyed this article and, for any questions, we read in the comments.
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